The Apps to Make Your Holiday Shopping & Entertaining Easy

When it comes to the holidays, it always seems like a thousand different things have to happen before we get to those few (hopefully more) moments of enjoyment. Whether you're shopping for gifts, running through the airport, entertaining guests, or cooking up a feast, hours of preparation are involved. In the midst of all that, there are plenty of times when you'll vent your frustrations with a phone call, text, tweet, or status update. But what if the solution to your holiday woes was already in your hand? Avoid some of those headaches this holiday season by downloading these apps and phoning in the holidays.

SHOPPING

You can get all Charlie Brown about it but that won't change the fact that gift-buying is one of the primary activities of the holiday season.

Making a List: To keep track of who's getting what, there's No More Socks, which brings together your bookmarked pages, photos, and notes with your contacts. You can even set a budget for your shopping spree. And to guard against prying eyes, the app can be password-protected. Gift List Manager has many of the same features and a barcode scanner to boot. If you can't even get to the list stage because you're low on ideas, Gift Ideas taps Amazon to let you shop according to the occasion, age, personality, and your relationship to the gift recipient.

Home Shopping Networked: The parking, the trek, the crowds, the Muzak, the lines, the schlepping, the locating the car—there are plenty of reasons to dodge the malls. If you opt for a hot chocolate, sofa, and roaring fire instead, you can still get your gift buying done. Amazon Mobile and Target are great for large swaths of shopping. ShopStyle sounds narrow but culls its selection from over 300 stores and gives you dozens of ways to search for presents for women, men, kids, and the home.

Mall Shopping - You Are Here: If you do decide to brave the sea of people at the mall, bring a map. FastMall gets you in and out of the mall as quickly as those lines will allow, letting you search for categories, items, places to get a bite, and the closest restroom. You can save your data plan for communicating with friends and family; once you've downloaded a mall map, you can access the app, use its turn-by-turn navigation inside the mall walls, and use its voice recorder to locate your car in the parking lot, all sans Internet. In addition to the U.S., FastMall leads you through malls in 30 other countries.

Let's Make a Deal: Whether you shop from the sofa or manage to make it through a mall, you undoubtedly want a deal. The Coupons App lets you search for coupons, sends you ones based on your location, and has a barcode scanner for price comparison shopping.

Wrap It Up: Santa's elves are meticulous gift wrappers, so don't let a sloppy wrapping job give your secret Santa identity away. iFinger not only leads you step by step through how to wrap a gift, it lends a hand—well, a finger—to hold the gift wrap in place while you reach for the tape. Plus, you won't be surrounded by strips of extra paper when you're done; you can calculate exactly how much paper you'll need for each gift.

Getting a hand-delivered holiday card is one of the nicest traditions of the season. But buying cards, writing them out, addressing envelopes, licking stamps, and getting the packet to the post office makes for a taxing and time-consuming holiday task. For iPhone and iPod Touch users, there's an alternative. The Cards app handles all of the above. Select one of the holiday designs or, if you're a fan of photo cards, customize one and then write in your message. If your cards are United States-bound, you'll receive an email on the day they're set to arrive. The cards cost $2.99 each if they're being sent within the U.S. and $4.99 if they're going overseas.

Home and family define the true spirit of the holidays. You can keep both festive with just a little directory assistance.

Fake Trees: A Christmas tree can be beautiful but there are those needles to sweep up and sap that gets everywhere. For all the lights and sparkle and none of the mess, there's Christmas Tree Decorator and Xmas Tree. Choose backgrounds, hang decorations, and light up the holidays with a tree that fits on your phone.

Light Up: You've bought enough gifts for eight crazy nights and now it's time to light the menorah, just like David Lee Roth, James Caan, Kirk Douglas, and the late Dinah Shore-ah. Maybe you're on the road or terrified by anything flammable. Maybe you're already standing there, candle in hand, unable to remember in which direction to light the candles or what prayers to say. Menorah is the new miracle of lights that will handle all of the above. Don't worry, we won't judge—though your mother might.

Yule Logs: No matter what holiday you celebrate, a winter fire is always welcome. For ones that snap, crackle, and pop like the real thing, there are FirePlace and Ambient Fireplace. FirePlace comes with soundtracks and lets you play your own music.

Fa La La La La: If there are no carolers to be found, Pandora offers a variety of holiday stations (Christmas, Folk Holidays, Hannukah, Jazz Holidays, Peaceful Holidays, and more) or you can create your own. If you're tired of hearing the holidays interrupt your genre stations, open the station, review the list of "Artist Seeds," and remove the check next to any artist entry that ends in "(holiday)."

Seeing loved ones rarely means a walk down the block anymore. Whether you’re packing packages into a car or leaving on a jet plane, you’ll need help with more than your bags.

Traffic Woes: The blight of holiday traffic lasts as long as the season itself. To detour hours stuck on the road, Waze makes navigation a social activity. Drivers report accidents, speed traps, and further road hazards so others know what to avoid. Waze is also a GPS app, so if you're rerouted, you can still get to grandma's on time.

Flying the Friendly Skies: Whether you're taking off or picking up, an airport map can save you from any unnecessary travel by getting you exactly where you need to be. Point Inside shows the way to gates, lounges, restrooms, and more. As for where the plane itself is, FlightView tracks flights in real time.

Your Goose is Cooked: If you're cooking for the holiday, feeding houseguests, or trying to come up with a fast weeknight meal during a busy season, Epicurious and How to Cook Everything are perfect sous chefs. Both have an extensive library of recipes, handy search and sorting features, and let you make up a shopping list.

Since some of the best homemade gifts are those that are home baked, you might want to download The Photo Cookbook – Baking, which has 60 simple recipes illustrated by over 500 photos, or Martha Stewart Makes Cookies.

Whatever you're cooking up, you'll want Ratio and Smart Chef Substitutions in the mix. Ratio lets you multiply and divide recipes with ease, while Smart Chef Substitutions can prevent emergency trips to the grocery store when you've forgotten an ingredient.

If the only thing you know how to make is reservations, leave it to the professionals. Download Yelp or Urbanspoon, find a local restaurant, and order up a feast.

When you're playing host, if it's for a week or even just an evening, you'll want to keep your guests entertained. For the youngest of them, Monkey Preschool Lunchbox is more fun than a barrel of, well… Doodle Buddy lets them draw, stamp, and stencil their own creations. Those slightly older will enjoy playing director of a Western, a monster movie, or a pirate adventure with Puppet Pals. For the parents, Trivia Burst and Words with Friends will bring out some friendly competition.

For photos that look instantly professional, use Instagram and one of its 16 filters to create picture-perfect holiday memories. Android and iOS users alike will want to download Flickr for the ability to upload and share albums, and Androidites will appreciate its filters since they're excluded from the Instagram party. For photo editing, it's hard to beat Photoshop and now it's available to go, improving your photos, saving them to albums, and showing them off as a slideshow from your phone.

Sometimes, a blustery blizzard or sky-high ticket prices prevent you from visiting with those you love most. The next best thing to being there is being there virtually. Spend some time video chatting with them via Skype.

Need help stringing lights or getting wine stains out? Videos from Howcast.com show you the way.

• How To Videos from Howcast.com (Android, iOS) Price: Free Platform: Android1.5 or later, iOS 4.1 or later

GIVE A LITTLE BIT

With all the time you've saved with these apps, you should have some left over to volunteer. You can easily find an opportunity close by that matches your interests with VolunteerMatch. If you're too tired from the holidays but want to do some good nevertheless, there's Donation Connect. Scroll through participating charities, select one (or more), and click to donate. You can then select an amount that can be either be added to your wireless bill or paid with a prepaid balance.